#1686 - Past, Present, Future… Where Is Your Focus?

In this episode, hosts Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros explore the relevance of time in our personal growth and relationships. They guide us to strike a harmonious balance between the echoes of our past, the vibrancy of our present, and the allure of our future. This conversation is not just about understanding time but about understanding ourselves. It's about embracing a new perspective, transcending the conventional wisdom of living solely for now. Learn how integrating wisdom from our history with ambitions for tomorrow can unlock true fulfillment and feel connected to your journey.

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Show notes:
(2:05) Time perspectives
(4:07) Balancing temporal dimensions
(5:25) Difference between therapy and coaching
(7:40) Overly focused: Memories, moments, and milestones
(10:27) Ideal day

🎙️ Hosted by Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros

Next Level University is a top-ranked daily podcast for dream chasers and self-improvement lovers. With over 2,100 episodes, we help you level up in life, love, health, and wealth one day at a time. Subscribe for real, honest, no-fluff growth every single day.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00

Next Level Nation. Welcome back to another episode of Next Level University, where we help you level up your life, your love, your health and your will. We hope you enjoyed yesterday's episode, episode number 1685, what Is Empowerment Today? For episode number 1686, past, present, future when Is your Focus? We were talking about this. I don't know if it was this week, if it was last week, if it was the week before. I have no idea. I don't even know what day it is. I don't know where I am half the time, but we were talking about past, present and future and we had a little conversation about it and I said I think that's something we should do a full episode on, because there have been times throughout this journey where I have been focused on almost purely past.

Speaker 1 0:47

I heard an ad on the radio the other day for therapy. It was for better help, nice. And yeah, yeah it was. It was cool. And the the host said if you've never heard of therapy, if you, if you have no experience with it, if it's something you've not done before, it's really you learning about yourself, it's you learning about your past, it's you learning how you react to certain situations, it's learning why you react, how you react in certain situations and it made me realize that that's really mostly past yeah right.

Speaker 1 1:20

When you go to therapy and not always, not not the entire time but when I go to therapy and not always, not the entire time but when I went to therapy, I was learning about my past, why the reason I am where I am today is not what I did yesterday. It's what I've been doing for the last 34 years, and yesterday is one of the very, very small pieces of what I've been doing for the last 34 years 34 years. So if you live in the past, that can be constructive, but it can also be damaging, potentially, if you do it too much and you don't take what you learned from the past and put it into the present.

Speaker 1 1:52

I think everybody, at some point in their life, is trying to live more in the present. They're trying to live more in the moment. They're trying to live more in flow. They're trying to not obsess over the future or the past. Been there for sure. And then I think there's some people who are exclusively living in the future and that might be to the detriment of their present, depending on and this is the disclaimer for every episode ever of all time depending on what is important to them. That's the ultimate lesson here the way I live life the way Alan lives life, the way the team lives their life. It's completely different than maybe the way you want to live your life, and this is one of those examples of how that might show up.

Speaker 2 2:38

So the past, present, future thing I've been contemplating I don't want to say every day, every, every month, I think is is accurate probably every week for the last nine years, but even when I was younger I would constantly contemplate this, because everyone has such a hyper focus in the, in the industry, on being in the present they always say that's the present.

Speaker 2 3:02

Make sure you stay in the present. They always say be present, make sure you stay in the present. The past and the future aren't real. Stay in the present. And I said this on Book Club. I will say this here I think that's terrible advice and I'm one of the very few people, for whatever reason, in this industry, that actually believes that's terrible advice. And the reason why is because it stops you from learning from the past and it stops you from focusing on designing a bigger, better, brighter future. And so if you go deep down the rabbit hole of the psychology around this, there's sort of like sigmund freud is all about the past, carl jung is very much present and then there's adler adlerian psychology. That's all about the future. And the obvious truth to me maybe this isn't obvious to everyone, but the obvious truth to me is it's all three and that's what makes life so hard. So like, if you're overly focused on the past, then being with a coach that's future oriented is going to help you tremendously, if you're already super future oriented. The last thing. That's why I always joke and I say if you want a therapist, you need a coach. If you want a coach, you need a therapist. It's because of that. So when you mentioned, therapy is all about the past. That's exactly it.

Speaker 2 4:11

People ask Emilia and I all the time, what's the difference between relationship talks coaching and couples therapy? And I said the difference between relationship talks coaching and couples therapy is our focus is helping you build your dreams together. It's future oriented, it's not. We learn from the past a ton and we go into the past and we understand the patterns, and we understand the patterns of each individual. But the purpose of the coaching is to help you achieve your dream, together or apart, if you're not meant to be together or don't wanna be together. And so coaching is much more future-oriented.

Speaker 2 4:44

It's listen. What are your goals, what are your dreams? What do you want in 5, 10, 15, 20 years? What is your career going to look like? Are you investing for XYZ? That is always what came naturally to me. I was always future oriented. What didn't come naturally to me was the present. What does come naturally is learning from the past and focusing on a bigger, better, brighter future. And so for me, the irony is the one person who that advice is good for is the one person who thinks it's silly advice. But here's the thing If someone is a broke college student who is smoking weed every day, lazy, not doing their work and I'm not trying to pick on anybody okay, but if they hear a book that's all about staying present, that's not actually a good idea. What they should do is go into their future and look at what's going to happen. People always say, well, oh, it'll all work out. No, it will not. No, it absolutely will not 10 years from now. It's not just gonna work out, and anyone who's older will tell you this. Sit down, some older people.

Speaker 2 5:52

I had an interview with an older man. He was in his 70s. It was one of my favorite interviews and I just ended up picking his brain for like 10 or 15 minutes after the the recording ended and I asked him about like what was it like back then, before the internet? Like what's the difference now between my generation and your generation? He said all this really cool stuff, but ultimately what it comes down to is one of us, every single one of us, is overly focused on one of the three and there's pros and cons to focusing on each.

Speaker 2 6:25

If you're overly focused on the present, you will probably not have, you're not going to stumble upon massive goals and dreams, you just aren't. It's not going to happen, most likely, statistically speaking. If you're overly if you're focused, by the way, overly on the present, you're probably very, very happy, very pleasantly happy, very fulfilled, very I don't want to say fulfilled, you're probably not fulfilled, but you're probably very calm, cool, collected. You probably enjoy your life. You know you have nice slow mornings and you're not super stressed out and you're in the present. And I get it, I do, I get it. If you're overly focused on the past, you're probably anxious and you're probably feel stuck. You probably are ruminating on all your past mistakes. We all have that moment in high school where we never will forget how embarrassed we were for something we said or did. It's like I can't believe.

Speaker 1 7:17

I said that I can't believe I did that, it's just still there, even though no one else could even remotely care.

Speaker 2 7:23

Right, it's not even on video, but it's still there for all of us.

Speaker 1 7:26

It's like why does that keep popping into my head? Yeah, hopefully it's not on video. Hopefully it's not on video, because things are different.

Speaker 2 7:33

It probably wasn't on video, but now yeah, things are different yeah it's funny, back in our day I say things like that now kevin's wild and then the future. If you're overly focused on the future, you're definitely anxious, because it can be so overwhelming. I mean, there's a thousand paths you can take. There's actually infinite paths you can take, and so a lot of people, I think and we coached this couple showed it to Kim and David Kim and David and this happens in relationships often where one of them is more future-oriented and the other one is more present-oriented. And so David wants and they wouldn't mind me sharing this, by the way, david wants more future orientation because he wants to know where they're going, what's the next house? So he's always focused on the next house, and and kim gets overwhelmed when he starts talking about that kind of stuff she wants to be more in the present, and so this happens with all of us.

Speaker 2 8:20

There's no right or wrong, despite what the industry says, of just always be present, unless you're a monk in a cave, which most of us. There's no right or wrong, despite what the industry says, of just always be present, unless you're a monk in a cave, which most of us aren't. Some of that is just bad advice. I'm just calling it out, and so the question is which one are you overdoing For me? I'm not present often, and so I know that a mindfulness practice is the next chapter for me. I need a mindfulness practice where I really do sit and zen out for a minute and really let my mind wander, because I don't do a lot of that. But for someone who's hanging out letting their mind wander all the time, they don't need more of that, and that's why it's so wonky.

Speaker 1 8:59

I was thinking of this the other day. I was thinking of if you could set up an ideal day based on health, wealth and love. Let's say you did a half hour of mobility, you did an hour of exercise and then you did a half hour of mindfulness. That's two hours of health. Let's say you did an hour of learning and then you did let's just say I don't know seven hours of work, hypothetically. So you have eight hours of wealth, you're learning and you're working to make money, and then you have the remaining time for love. Let's say it's two hours. I think you can do the same with past, present and future day to day, if you know how to do it right, whatever your unique version is. Now, in the example I just used, it was two hours relationship, two hours health and seven hours wealth. I think there's multiple. Was it eight? Whatever? Whatever numbers I used, pretend I said them again correctly the second time, because I think one of those things is probably weaker. It's a lot easier to connect. Maybe not for everyone. It's most likely easier to go to the gym for a half hour than it is to make a meaningful amount of money. To move the needle on making a meaningful amount of money. That takes a lot of work. There's a lot of other things outside of your control where going to the gym, if you have a vehicle or you have a way to get there, or you have dumbbells at home or whatever it is. There's a lot more in control. I think of the past, present, future as the same thing. Past, maybe you do. Okay, this was my ultimate thought. You have a therapist that you talk about the past with. You have a coach that helps you execute on your daily things in the present, and then you have somebody who's a visionary that helps you plan the future. That's great. You would be wildly successful. Quote unquote, whatever that means, because you're working on your weaknesses while you work on your strengths. Hard part about that is it would be overwhelming as hell to deal with that every single day. Most likely, it would probably be super challenging, but you and I every Monday, that's kind of what we're doing. Every single Monday, alan and I meet for like seven hours, depending on the day, depending on what's going on, depending on how many episodes we record and we talk about. Oh, my goodness, I learned this about myself and I think this is where it comes from. What are we doing right now and how do we improve that? And then, what's the next thing that we do? I've had we were talking about this the other day I've had times where I was very, very focused on the present.

Speaker 1 11:46

I went through a lot of different seasons and I think the seasons are there for lessons and reasons and I don't know. I know it's easy to get caught in the season that's most convenient. I remember I used to go to uh, we were talking about this the other day I used to go to a really nice coffee shop back in one of the towns I lived in and it was beautiful. It was in the town center, it was. It was wonderful. It was a wonderful little shop and I used to go and I would get my iced latte and I would sit out on the sidewalk at the table and I would meditate and I would journal and I would have calming music and it was like the best you want to talk about, the most presents ever, and that season was important. But I was also broke as shit at that point. I was very, very, very broke. Of course Would I?

Speaker 2 12:39

I'm over here petting deer, I know, I know You're in the coffee shop zenning out.

Speaker 1 12:44

I'm not telling you to not go through that phase. I think it's important. I think, I don't know, is it? Do I want someone to be a 21 year old partier? Eh, not really, but I do think you can learn a lot of lessons by going through that phase.

Speaker 2 13:01

Yeah, and if you don't have that phase you probably you could regret it.

Speaker 1 13:05

Yeah.

Speaker 2 13:05

Later on you might have a midlife crisis and realize you never went off the rails.

Speaker 2 13:10

Yeah, and sometimes you have to and ever went off the rails. And sometimes you have to and this is the super unfortunate part of life is you kind of have to go too far down one of them before you realize that you did. It's almost like it's a spectrum, right? Let's say it's past, present, future, zero to 10. Let's say five is present, 10 is future, zero is past. You have to go all the way down each of them. So in therapy we went all the way.

Speaker 2 13:35

Me and Carol have gone so deep into my past and it's awful at times. Genuinely, sometimes it's just awful. There's nothing fun about it. It's not enjoyable, like I think that there needs to be. And again, I don't want to project on anyone, but I need to say this If your focus is enjoying your life, you're in trouble. I know that sounds counterintuitive. Everything is super paradoxical. Therapy is not enjoyable. No part of therapy has been enjoyable. Carol's a wonderful person, but the rest of it has just been not enjoyable at all. But I have a more enjoyable life because I was willing to do something. That's not enjoyable it's. I always use the stair master. I'll never not use it because it just sucks, and if you've ever been on a stair master. There's no part of it that's even remotely enjoyable, and I think that's a good analogy for life, because you have to go face the discomfort of going too far before you know, before you learn.

Speaker 2 14:39

I would love to believe we can all just like learn from books. Books help, but experiential learning is the only way to really get it. Until you're in the ring, you just don't. I mean you can learn, you can study relationships all you want. I was on a relationship talks coaching session with one of my clients yesterday and we were learning a lot of theory. I had Zoom up and frameworks, but he's in a relationship. I know his partner, I know what they're like. It's different because he's in it he's learning theory. While in a relationship, I know his partner, I know what they're like, it's different because he's in it he's learning theory while in the ring.

Speaker 2 15:18

You can't just learn theory while not being in a relationship. You can and you can prepare for a relationship. So if you're single, I'm not saying not to learn about relationships. You should. It's great, nonviolent communication, vulnerability, all these different things, things but it's not going to be the same as learning it and implementing it. And so to your point, kev, you kind of have to go too far. So in that phase, that chapter, we both had a chapter where we were too present. Is that fair?

Speaker 2 15:48

we were like super monk mode just overly present, and we went broke.

Speaker 1 15:59

And honestly, for someone who's never present being more present is great advice.

Speaker 2 16:00

I think that's me now.

Speaker 1 16:02

I think I need to be a little bit more present, based on all the stuff that's going on.

Speaker 2 16:06

That's the paradox, I know. So one thing I want to share with everybody really quickly is I had a conversation imagine a conversation. I'm sitting down with someone at we're at like lunch, and they say aren't you, don't you feel like you should relax a little more? And they say that to me, right, and I say, yeah, actually, but don't you think you should work a little more? And here's the paradox I should relax more. But the other person who thinks I should relax more is only thinking that because they're validating the fact that they love relaxing, and so I'm. I love working, so I should relax more.

Speaker 2 16:46

Someone who loves relaxing should work more if you want a holistically well-developed life. And so, unfortunately, we're all in these echo chambers of people affirming what we already believe yeah, and so you, kev, and I have been very future oriented. We've been very grind. Time for the last q1 was brutal. We should try to be a little more present and think a little bit more about the, our health and enjoying our life and spending quality time with Taryn and Emilia, but only because we just left the chapter where it was only grind, whereas that advice would actually be terrible for someone who just left the chapter of only chilling.

Speaker 1 17:26

Well, and you can also see how the present is affecting the future. So when you're living too far into the future, it affects the present, which then affects the future in a weird way, like you getting sick for the first time. We were living so far in the future you more than I that you had to come back in the present and say what's happening here. I have to shift the present, because if I don't shift the present, the future is not going to look like I expect it to. But again, you pushed it too far to one. I think that's really the only way to your point. I don't know if there's I don't know if there's another way to do it.

Speaker 1 18:06

I think it's a lot easier to start one fire and then either make the fire bigger or make the fire smaller, than if you're trying to start three fires at the same time. You only have a certain amount of wood, you only have a certain amount of fuel. If you start one fire and it starts going, it's like ah, this is burning too much, I need to let this thing cool down. I can't throw anything more on. Alright, I can take that wood and throw another fire. Take that wood and throw another fire Awesome. Okay, that fire's not. It's not working at all. I need to pour more onto that. Okay, awesome, right, I think that's kind of the way it's designed. And then, when you were talking earlier about if you want a really easy life, you're in for, yeah, most likely a very, very challenging life later on, can you go into that.

Speaker 2 18:52

I think, it's Because I want to know what you believe about that, because it's paradoxical.

Speaker 1 18:55

You've been saying paradoxical a lot lately. If you want to enjoy your life, I love it. That's your phase. You're in paradoxical.

Speaker 2 19:00

I am. I'm in such a paradox chapter. I'm realizing that everything is a paradox. Everything's a duality.

Speaker 1 19:05

I think this is the best way. The best way is it's something we've been saying for a long, long, long period of time you're always going to get the feedback. You're always going to get the resistance. It's either you get it little by little along the way or you get it all at once. At the end, I think it's a snowball versus an avalanche. You can say, yeah, there's nothing wrong with this mountain. No, no, this mountain's great, it's beautiful. This mountain's awesome. I don't have to worry about it, it's great, it's great. It's great. You ski it, you snowboard it every day. Life is dandy.

Speaker 1 19:32

One day, the avalanche breaks free and there's a lot of freaking snow on that thing, versus throwing a snowball down every day. Let me throw the snowball down, let me throw the snowball down. I think that's kind of the way it is, because, and by definition, growth requires resistance. In its simplest form, growth requires resistance. How many people do we know, unfortunately, that take the quote-unquote easy route by eating whatever they want, not sleeping as much as they need to? Because here's the thing, getting eight hours of sleep is really hard. Oh, it's brutal.

Speaker 2 20:12

It's so difficult. Yeah, that's one of my biggest challenges.

Speaker 1 20:15

Yeah, for sure, especially if you have a family and you're a parent and all that. But it takes discipline to get the right amount of sleep, for sure, and it takes boundaries and scheduling and prioritization and all that. So this person's not sleeping enough, they're not eating well, they're drinking more than they should, they're not exercising, they're not planning for their future. It's not going to be good. Alan, I saw a picture of someone yesterday. I'll keep it very, very anonymous, but this is someone I knew 2014 to 2017. I saw a picture of this person. I didn't even recognize them. They probably and again, this is not from a place of shame or judgment, this is just me observing and trying to figure out why Probably gained 50 or 60 pounds. Then I play back okay, why this person never exercised. This person drank daily, ate terrible food, smoked cigarettes and did not take care of themselves. That all seemed really, really easy at the time. I'm telling you it's just going to keep getting worse.

Speaker 2 21:29

We are in a time and now the life couldn't possibly be easy. No, they're paying for those past choices.

Speaker 1 21:34

Yeah, 100% we are at a very interesting stage. I've been saying this to Alan for a while, and then we'll let you all go. Alan and I are 34 and 35. This is where things really start to get real in life, and whatever age you are out there, if you're around our age or even older, you know this better than we do. This is where you start to see your good choices add up and other people's or your own, unfortunately bad choices add up, and this is where the contrast gets really big, because if you're growing and somebody else is stagnant, that doesn't mean they're stagnant, they're actually shrinking, for lack of better phrasing, and that's why the contrast gets so great. If you're growing at five miles an hour and somebody else is shrinking at five miles an hour, you're actually creating 10 miles an hour of distance.

Speaker 2 22:25

Every single year, every single year, every single year, every single year, day, week, year and it speeds up.

Speaker 1 22:30

Yep, it accelerates. So yeah, just, I know this is kind of a hardcore episode, but what do you find is easiest for you? Is it easiest for you to live in the past? Is it easiest for you to live in the present? Is it easiest for you to live in the future? What if we poured some rocks in those other buckets to see how it felt, and try to experience that and see the positives and see the benefits of that?

Speaker 2 22:56

that would be my question to end the episode learn from the past, build in the present toward a bigger, better, brighter future. So I have my therapist, carol, for the past, I have kev to build in the present with and I have Emilia as my visionary, and there's many other people in between. So it's really important to have all three of those buckets really filled and fulfilled. And the truth is, if you want a holistic life, that's a big if. If you don't want a holistic life, don't worry about any of this. But if you want a healthy, wealthy, happy, productive in love life, you're going to have to do all three, despite what these books say about, just stay in the present. I'm not trying to make fun of them, sorry. I don't want to be unkind. I just think it's overused. I do. I think it's overused and I think a lot of us are actually overly in the present. And of course I'm biased. I understand that. I'm biased, I understand that. But if you don't have your future designed, it's not going to. You're not going to shoot an arrow up in the air and hope it lands someplace nice. What if it lands someplace not nice? You know, two, five, 10, 15 years later and to Kev's point, we are in an age now that is very, it's very interesting to see a long-term compound effect of people's accumulated choices. We don't control everything. We do not. There's macroeconomic stuff going on. There's a lot you can't control. But you can control your choices you can. You have a choice. You have a choice of what to listen to. You have a choice of who to follow on social media. You have a choice of what books to read. You have a choice of what to eat. You have a choice of what to eat. You have a choice of what gym to go to or not. You have a choice, and I think that's the most empowering thing in the world and I just hope everyone makes bigger, better, brighter choices for a bigger, better, brighter future. And yes, that's also what NLU is about.

Speaker 2 24:39

Nlu is very future oriented. So if you avoid the future, you probably wouldn't be listening to us. So most likely you're pretty future oriented as well, and or you're pretty future oriented as well, and or you're coming to us for that. I have one client who listens to us every single day. He said that's why I listen. It just keeps me focused on my future. I was like that's exactly what it's for. We're not for everybody. No one loves every like. There's a movie Not everyone likes it. There's tons of podcasts. Not everyone likes our podcast, but if you do, we can be that, that daily dose of future orientation for you that will help you make sure that 5, 10, 15 years from now, you're proud of yourself.

Speaker 1 25:13

If one of the things you are focused on for the future is leveling up your wealth, we have a meetup on Thursday May it's already May, my goodness. Thursday May 2nd, 6 pm Eastern Standard Time. It is on that exactly how to level up your wealth. It is behind the scenes, totally private. We'll have the link in the show notes if you want to join us and, as always, if you're looking for a group of like-minded individuals who are into growth, where you can be your authentic self. We have a private Facebook group called Next Level Nation. Link will be in the show notes for that Tomorrow, for episode number 1,600 and hold on, I do believe I'm jeffing here. I believe it's 1,687? Correct. For some reason my numbers are wrong.

Speaker 2 26:00

You gotta know your numbers, man 1,687,.

Speaker 1 26:03

You know what I'm saying. One word to help you level up your life. So we are going to talk about it'll mostly be present, slash future, predominantly future. So that's what we're going to talk about tomorrow. As always, we love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each and every one of you, and at NLU, we don't have fans, we have family We'll talk to you all tomorrow.

Speaker 2 26:22

Keep after it. Next Level Nation.